


there is very little you can do for me

by waterleveldropping



Category: Hatoful Kareshi | Hatoful Boyfriend
Genre: Blood, M/M, Psychological Horror, Self Harm, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-04
Updated: 2020-10-04
Packaged: 2021-03-06 17:22:09
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,001
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26452543
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/waterleveldropping/pseuds/waterleveldropping
Summary: He isn’t wearing gloves this time. Kazuaki doesn’t request that he does. Like this, it’ll be easier to pretend.
Relationships: Fujishiro Nageki & Uzune Hitori, Iwamine Shuu/Nanaki Kazuaki, Iwamine Shuu/Uzune Hitori
Comments: 1
Kudos: 6
Collections: Fic In A Box





	there is very little you can do for me

**Author's Note:**

  * For [PrisonersDilemma](https://archiveofourown.org/users/PrisonersDilemma/gifts).



> hello hello! i hope you enjoy what ive cooked up here, i don't know if you were expecting hatoful, but, its actually an old favorite fandom of mine, and i was rly surprised to be paired with the only person who requested in this exchange, even tho i didnt offer for it! i was very happy to revisit these characters again, thank you for giving me the chance!
> 
> hitori is a favorite, i think that much is obvious from this fic, but I hope it satisfies the creepy nanashuu you requested! this was a lot of fun to do.
> 
> enjoy :>

He hadn’t meant to let it go on for this long. 

When he was young and naive, Hitori had assumed his future would be better: well, it could hardly get worse, right? That eventually he wouldn’t need to resort to such methods to feel okay.

It was back then when he was barely surviving that he had picked up the habit himself. It grounded him when things got too hectic around him, helped him tidy away some of the grief into neat little lines that began at his wrist and trailed all the way up his inner arms, ending just above the crook of his elbow. Some of the lines crisscrossed, but past scares were neat and orderly. Layer after layer. Allow the angry, red skin to heal and scab, then start anew on another layer, fossilizing the ones underneath. 

Even in the warm spring air, Nanaki wore long sleeves. It was a running joke around some of the students and even a few faculty that Professor Nanaki was always forgetting to buy new clothes. After all, he came from the north of Japan, where it was colder for longer, and was always having to resort to his winter wardrobe. 

Aside from the odd joke here and there, no one really paid much attention to Kazuaki’s outfit-- although, Kazuaki thought, Doctor Iwamine had made a couple of offhanded comments on more than a few occasions. It didn’t matter, however. Iwamine Shuu knew nothing of Kazuaki’s real identity, and it was going to stay that way until the very moment Hitori brought the entire world down around them and finally laid to rest the noise in his head that spoke in Nageki’s voice. 

Save for the raised scars, the skin at Nanaki’s inner arm was mostly unblemished currently. It had been a few weeks since his last session (sitting alone in his tiny apartment, on the futon on the floor, dragging kitchen shears along his soft skin, uncaring, tired eyes watching as the blood follows the curve of his arm and drips onto his white blanket), and he felt the familiar building of tension in the back of his head. He knew from experience that was where it began, spreading down his spine, into his shaking hands eventually making it impossible for him to function until he ripped through his wrists again. 

It was getting close to that point. Maybe that’s why when he stays too late after school one day, he just allows it to happen. Nanaki is hanging posters for the school festival when he cuts himself unintentionally; it’s just a loose staple jutting out from the wall, a complete accident, but the pain blooms beautifully in the small slice he’s made in his skin. 

Before he can stop himself, he picks up the blunt scissors that he keeps in a cup on his desk, and brings the sharp metal vertically across his inner arm, almost unaware of what he is doing. 

If he doesn’t treat it as something of importance, then it will adopt that insignificance, and maintain it until it is second nature. 

The release of tension is immediate, and his legs nearly buckle from the sensation as it washes over him. An involuntary whimper escapes his lips as he falls into his desk chair, grips at the wet wound with his other hand. After the strain gives way, it is a few more seconds before the white hot pain takes its place, and Nanaki barely bites back the scream in his throat. He doesn’t usually cut this deep, or vertically, for that matter, as he is well aware of the risks. 

Grip white-knuckled on the gash, warm crimson seeping through the spaces between his fingers, Nanaki has the thought that he may have possibly gone too far. 

None of the options his frantic mind presents to him are viable. Pulling out the desk drawer reveals nothing more than old papers and pens, nothing to stop the red running from his arm onto the tile floor. Nanaki tries to stand, but barely leans himself forward when the floor begins to spin under him and knocks him back into the faux-leather chair.

“Professor Nanaki?”

The voice comes from the hall. At least, Nanaki thinks it does. When he attempts to look up, his vision is flickering, blurred. He sees a figure step closer to him, through the door and into the classroom and when did it get so close? 

A hand clasps over Kazuaki’s own, applying more pressure to his cut and causing Kazuaki to jerk away in pain. 

“Fascinating,” The grip holds strong, and Kazuaki takes a few more shallows breaths before his head lolls against the cold metal desk, unconscious. 

* * *

The acrid stench of medical alcohol stinging his nostrils is what finally wakes Kazuaki up. He blinks awake in the bright overhead lights of the room, and realizes with a start that he is in the St. Pigeonations infirmary. 

“Ah. You’re awake, are you?”

Kazuaki’s head jerks to the side and finds Shuu Iwamine at his bedside. Bedside. That’s right, he is laid in one of the small beds that occupy the room behind plastic dividers. There is a sudden stinging in his arm and Kazuaki realizes that Iwamine is rubbing a salve into the wound on his arm. 

The rest all comes rushing back to him so quickly that he finally shakes the tired stupor he had been in and sits up, back ramrod straight. 

“Hold still, please,” says Iwamine, his hold on Kazuaki’s wrist firm as it ever was. “I’m nearly done.”

“I can handle the rest myself,” Kazuaki replies, trying and failing to pull his arm back once again. 

“That won’t be necessary. Just allow me to wrap the gauze,” Iwamine produces a roll of white medical gauze from the small cabinet next to the bed. Kazuaki watches, cautious, as the doctor unfurls the roll and begins to apply it to Kazuaki’s wrist. Which, he realizes with a start, is mostly closed up and healed. 

Shuu notices Kazuaki staring and clears his throat, “You required a few minor stitches. That cut of yours was very deep."

“It must have been a slip of my hand while using scissors,” Kazuaki interjects. “I should be thankful you were there, shouldn’t I?”

“I suppose you should.” Iwamine answered, not taking his eyes from his work. Not feeling safe enough to leave the doctor to his own devices, Kazuaki allows Shuu to patch him up under his watchful gaze. For a while, neither of them talk. 

Kazuaki wonders how late it is. He had already stayed later than usual after classes had ended, and the school grounds are missing the familiar sounds of the track team’s practice. He wants to go home. He needs to go home, every moment around Doctor Iwamine puts him more on edge. 

The doctor is wearing gloves, but still Kazuaki has to fight the revulsion that springs up in his stomach when the powdered latex brushes his own skin. Those are the same hands that took Nageki from him, he should grab the small scissors off the side table and lodge them deep into Iwamine’s exposed neck.

“There, all done,” says Shuu. He cuts the gauze and presses the loose end down, forming a secure and not-too-tight seal that wraps up Kazuaki’s forearm. 

“Thank you, doctor,” Kazuaki forces a tired smile. “I’ll try to be more careful in the future.”

“You are free to stay here for longer if you don’t feel fit to stand. You did lose quite a bit of blood, after all,” Shuu begins cleaning off the small table, placing things back in their respective drawers. 

Kazuaki is pushing the thin blankets off of himself before Shuu even finishes speaking. “No, I really should be getting back home,” he finds his coat on the chair next to the bed, quickly putting it on and pulling his sleeves down to his wrists again. “Thank you again, doctor.”

“Of course,” Shuu says, still not meeting Kazuaki’s eyes. Then, without preamble, says: “Next time you decide to self-inflict a wound, do make sure the tools you’re using are properly sanitized.” 

Kazuaki’s hand freezes centimeters from the door. 

“It’ll save you quite a bit of trouble. Unless of course, you’re keen on getting an infection,” the doctor wipes off the pair of scissors he used to cut the gauze, and Kazuaki realizes suddenly that they’re the same scissors that inflicted the cut in the first place. “An infection in a wound that deep could easily spread through your whole arm, forcing an amputation before it moves up your body, to your shoulder, your chest…”

“It was an accident,” Kazuaki states, plainly, his usual drowsy intonation replaced with a much more clipped tone. 

“Yes, I know. As were the last hundred little cuts you made across your forearms, I presume?” 

Unconsciously, Kazuaki’s hand wraps around his covered wrist. He does not reply, instead picks at a loose thread in his coat. 

Shuu stands finally, still holding the scissors. “Don’t worry. I will not disclose my findings here to anyone,” a snide smile. There is a moment of silence that Kazuaki swears lasts hours, until Shuu breaks eye contact, and adds, “In fact, I find the state of your arms… enthralling.” 

“I really must be going, doctor,” Nanaki replies, barely concealing his temper. 

“Of course,” Iwamine tilts his head slightly, “I believe classroom 2-3 is missing a pair of scissors,” he holds them out, blade facing Kazuaki. The other man takes them, then leaves without another word.

On the walk to the subway station, Kazuaki barely fights the urge to tear off the gauze snaking around his arm. This thing that signifies what Shuu now knows about him, what Hitori had previously only let one other person know. He settles instead for picking the skin around it in small patches until it bleeds. 

* * *

The day after Kazuaki’s accident is no better. On his lunch break, he finds a small, ornately wrapped box on his teacher’s room desk. There is no note, and nothing that signifies what it may contain.

It is the middle of May, and Legumentines is far behind them. Not that any student would give him beans, that would be highly inappropriate. The box isn’t heavy when he picks it up, and when he checks around him, all the other professors are hard at work. Nanaki opens the box. 

Inside it is a small medical scalpel with a delicate red ribbon hand-tied around the cold metal of its shape. 

He does not need to wonder who it is from.

It’s insulting, repulsive, and Kazuaki barely fights the urge to find wherever Iwamine is at the moment and stick the horrible thing into his chest. It’s an insult, a prod at what Shuu now knows. He’s mocking him. Kazuaki stares at the offending instrument for a few more seconds before he slips the cover back on to it, and wills it forgotten for the time being. He will confront Iwamine later. 

Nanaki sits down at his computer, pushes the box aside, and focuses on grading Wednesday’s maths quiz, pushing his revulsion from his mind the way he knows best.

* * *

Kazuaki finds Iwamine in the infirmary after the final class of the day has ended. The doctor is sitting at his desk, making notes about the vials in front of him. Kazuaki feels like walking up and knocking all of the carefully placed bottles to the floor, shattering them and watching Iwamine step over broken glass.

Instead, he walks up to the desk, slowly, civilly, and places the little red box down on the paper Iwamine is writing on, and turns to leave the room. Iwamine starts, having not even noticed Nanaki until the box was obscuring his notes. 

“Were you not keen on my gift?” Shuu asks, still not looking up, instead gently pushing the box away to allow him to continue. 

Kazuaki tries to keep walking, tries to get himself to step out the door and into the hall and away from the conversation he knows he’s being tempted into, but his traitorous body turns to retort, “Hardly a gift, don’t you think?” 

“I did sincerely mean my previous remark. I endeavored to find you something sharp and clean, and most of all,  _ effective,”  _

Kazuaki recoils. “What do you want from me, Doctor Iwamine?” he asks, wanting this conversation to end and never be acknowledged again.

“I wish to watch you cut yourself.”

Kazuaki freezes, his breath catching in his throat. “What did you say?”

“I find your scars rather beautiful, and would like to watch you inflict them on yourself, that is all.” Iwamine repeats. The expression on his face is unreadable. “If you do not want the same, simply tell me.” 

Kazuaki waits a few more seconds, memorizing Iwamine Shuu’s face, and then turns and is gone out the sliding door, Shuu staring after him, after the glimpse of his wrist that his flourish grants. 

* * *

Kazuaki cannot taste the food he is chewing. It’s just a robotic, subconscious movement of his jaw, and the occasional flex of his throat. He can think of nothing other than the hatred that encompasses every inch of his body. 

He’s in a short-sleeved shirt at his shitty dining room table, if a rickety stool and counter covered in unpaid bills can be considered as such. The cuts on his arms are still faded, with the exception of the huge vertical gash stretching down his left inner forearm. 

That one makes him itch when he looks at it.

He’s made it a point to not let anyone at all get close to him. He cannot afford to get distracted,  _ and he won’t, _ he tells himself. This is all for Nageki. 

When he thinks about Nageki he thinks of fields of country millet, of home cooking, of sunsets and bedtime stories and _home._ All warm, gentle thoughts. But there was more to Nageki, wasn’t there? Something under the skin. Something rotten and festering, that still haunts his mind. 

The guilt. The guilt of not being able to help him when he needed it. Hitori had been there for him every time he could, and still he had failed. When Nageki was home alone that day, he had failed. When Nageki was trapped by that awful doctor and burned alive, he had failed. 

The scars on his wrists were also a reminder of Nageki, yes. The neatest cuts, buried beneath layers of healed skin, those were a gift from Nageki. 

Hitori threw out the rest of his conbini dinner, his appetite nonexistent, and his brain sick of pretending it was ever there. His stomach isn’t full, it still wants, but Hitori ignores it. He goes to grab a kitchen knife from the stand by the sink, but finds it empty. Hitori stares for a second, and then turns his gaze to the full pile of dirty dishes taking up residence in his small sink. 

He frowns, moving instead to the sorry excuse for a bedroom, and the mess of a desk by the window. He sifts through old report cards and essays, knocking pens and stacks of paper to the floor, but can find no scissors. 

Frustrated, with familiar tension budding at the back of his skull, he returns to the kitchen and fishes a knife out of the pile in the sink. He washes it with soap in the bathroom, seeing as his kitchen sink is unusable at the moment-- is that why he started buying conbini dinners? He is usually good about cooking-- and wipes the small cutting knife dry on his sweater. He doesn’t know how he managed to clean it without slicing his palm open. Small mercies, he supposes.

Back in the living room, he sits on the small couch and stares at his wrist. The vertical gash on his left arm is so ugly, and Hitori almost tears through it on impulse, but stops himself. He tries to steady his shaking hand. He’s been so unfair to the cuts Nageki made. Hitori’s cuts are angry, impulsive, done in rage. Nageki’s were done out of love, of restraint. He wishes he could duplicate them, mimic the feeling of thin, shallow cuts, but he can’t. 

Nageki hadn’t cut to hurt him. He hadn’t cut to inflict pain. That was the difference. Nageki had cut him because Hitori had offered to let him. He had seen the red lines on Nageki’s arm one morning as they were picking millet for breakfast, he still recalled how his heart sank at the sight. Worse, he knew Nageki wasn’t going to react well when Hitori brought it up. But he needed to bring it up. He couldn’t let Nageki continue to harm himself like that, inflict scars that had no place on his small, frail arms. 

So, Hitori had allowed Nageki to cut his arms instead. Whenever Nageki needed release, he would find Hitori, and together they would hide away in some corner of the house-- sometimes even in the millet fields-- and Nageki would hold Hitori’s shaking arm tightly, and cut. And cut and cut and cut. Never deep, never enough to bleed more than a few drops. But enough to scar. And after a while, the first marks Nageki had carved into himself faded, and Hitori’s arms were painted with stripes Nageki gave him. 

After Nageki was gone, Hitori had tried to duplicate the emotion he couldn’t name that bubbled up whenever Nageki approached him with that familiar look in his eyes. But it soon devolved into a form of release, not of remembrance. Hitori wanted to hurt himself, convinced that that is what the Nageki in his mind wanted from him. Penance. 

Hitori shook on the couch, tossing the knife away from himself in revulsion. This wasn’t right. He hadn’t intended for it to become this sort of thing. When did it twist and warp into something so ugly and so unlike what Nageki, the  _ real  _ Nageki, wanted? He pressed a thumb into his wrist, willing the blood to the surface. The scars revealed themselves this way, and Hitori felt his stomach turn at the sight. Nageki’s were no longer visible. Only the hideous, uneven ones Hitori had caused himself. He felt nauseous, his tasteless dinner threatening to vacate his stomach.

He needed to fix it. If he didn’t, he would feel sick everytime he caught sight of his wrists in the bath, when washing up, when he slept. It would eat away at his mind until he did something else Nageki wouldn’t approve of, and that wasn’t allowed. Not anymore, not now that he had seen his error.

He needed to replace them.

_ But how? _ Hitori thought. He didn’t trust himself enough to form the clean, pure cuts Nageki had formed. He couldn’t trust himself at all anymore, not after defiling Nageki’s memory like this. 

Clean, pure, precise.

_ Surgical.  _

Hitori knew what to do.

* * *

There are still a few students in the infirmary cleaning up when Kazuaki passed it after school. He checked in, walking down the hall every half hour, until finally, the last student left. Nanaki let himself in, the sliding door giving way to an empty, dark room. Flicking the overhead lights on reveals that he is truly alone. 

The doctor is in today, Kazuaki knows for a fact. He’s seen him in the halls, passed by him in the staffroom. Endeavoring to wait until he appears, Kazuaki inspects the medical cabinets. Rows of dubious liquids sit still behind the polished glass. The room smells vaguely of cleaning supplies and something acidic that Kazuaki can’t quite place. 

“Nanaki.” 

Kazuaki hadn’t even heard the door slide open. It seems he isn’t the only one capable of slipping by undetected. Shuu stands at the door, a jar full of dark liquid in one hand, a clipboard in the other. 

“I see you’ve come,” Iwamine notes, no surprise in his tone. Kazuaki wants to hit him-- or break the jar he’s holding-- whichever hurts most. He takes a deep breath and replies with a question. “Do you still have it?”

“The scalpel I gifted you? Of course.” Iwamine says, placing the jar on his desk as if he’s just come in the home and is putting his keys in the dish by the door. “Changed your mind, have you?”

Kazuaki says nothing. 

Shuu stares at him for a minute, then, sensing both his resolve and refusal to reply, sighs slightly and pulls a keyring from his lab coat pocket. Kazuaki watches as he fishes out a small, bronze key and sticks it into the keyhole in the desk drawer. The drawer clicks open, but before Kazuaki can process the contents, Shuu slips the tiny red box out from instead of it and clicks it shut again. 

Without a word or a glance, Iwamine hands him the box. Kazuaki takes it. He stares down at it and slides the cover off again, this time knowing what to expect. The same silver scalpel gleams back at him from the wrapping, and Kazuaki feels nothing. 

“I want for you to do it,” Kazuaki says, and holds the box out to Shuu. At this, Iwamine does still. He stops organizing the papers on his desk and looks down at the scalpel, then at Nanaki. 

“That wasn’t what we agreed on, is it?” he asks.

“I don’t remember us agreeing on anything,” Kazuaki retorts, barely keeping the edge out of his voice. “Either you cut me, or I leave.”

There is a moment of silence in which Kazuaki can almost hear the refusal in Shuu’s voice before he opens his lips. 

“Interesting,” Shuu says instead, catching Kazuaki off guard. “Alright.”

If it takes a second for Kazuaki to get his bearings back, he does not show it. Instead, he nods once, and follows Iwamine over to the cot. It’s the same bed he had woken up to Shuu bandaging his arm on, and Kazuaki takes a seat on the edge of it, hesitant. 

“Lie back,” says Shuu, already taking his seat in the cushioned stool next to the bedside. He begins opening drawers and producing small disinfectant wipes from inside them, along with the familiar roll of gauze and fabric scissors. 

Kazuaki reluctantly does as he is told, stiffly laying himself against the cold, sterile sheets of the infirmary bed. It’s the farthest thing from comforting, and Iwamine’s glare is even less so. 

“Must I do everything?” Shuu mumbles, and begins unbuttoning Kazuaki’s sleeve. Nanaki lets him, his mind feeling farther from his body with each second Iwamine’s hands are on him. He isn’t wearing gloves this time. Kazuaki doesn’t request that he does. Like this, it’ll be easier to pretend.

Pushing the fabric up to Kazuaki’s elbow, Shuu bunches the shirt up before moving to wipe the area with a cold alcohol wipe. Everything about the situation is cold, unfriendly; nothing like when Nageki would handle him. Shuu’s hands are frigid, but it helps Kazuaki remember the warmth of Nageki’s touch all the better. 

Shuu sterilizes the scalpel too, for good measure. A once-over with a wipe and then Shuu is turning to face him. 

“You’re quite sure? You will need to hold still, I am not keen on anything but neat cuts. I don’t intend for you to bleed out,” he pauses, then adds: “That is not what you asked for, after all.”

Kazuaki nods, meeting Shuu’s eyes for the first time since coming in, and finds something else in them. Something that shakes with anticipation. 

Almost like the shake in Nageki’s eyes. 

Kazuaki balls his hand into a fist, and Shuu grips his wrist firmly, and there is almost a certain heat to it, the feeling so close to familiar but not quite reaching it. 

Then Iwamine makes the first cut. 

Kazuaki gasps, a quick, sharp intake of breath. Pain spreads from the scalpel like fire, pooling low in Kazuaki’s gut and flaring up through the drops of blood that seep from the wound when Shuu presses just below it. 

Then, another one, just above the last. 

Kazuaki’s heart thuds in his chest, working harder than it has in years. Everything has felt so numb since losing Nageki, but this, this feels real. This is visceral and hot and familiar, and Kazuaki doesn’t know if he’s crying from the pain or the memory. Shuu does not pay it any mind regardless. 

The cuts come faster after that. Shuu never traces one more than once. He simply lines up the incision and then swipes the blade across. The scalpel is medical-grade, of course, and sharp as hell, not needing much pressure at all to cut. The marks begin to grow up Kazuaki’s right arm, forming a wonderful, even set. 

They are all perfectly even in length, all nearly the same depth, if the stinging pain is any indication. They’re almost neater than Nageki’s-- but not better, no. Nothing could replace Nageki. Nothing. 

When Iwamine presses directly onto the slices in the skin with his bare hands, blood beads under his fingernail. Kazuaki all but sees stars, black blotting his vision. It all feels so  _ real,  _ Kazuaki can’t remember the last time he felt so  _ much.  _ He looks up to Iwamine’s face, shaking apart under his touch, but it isn’t Iwamine who sits before him. 

Nageki stares back, and he looks alive, and  _ healthy _ , so healthy and alive and in front of Hitori again. Hitori opens Kazuaki’s mouth to say something to his brother, but there is so much to say that none of it comes out. He simply lays there in a cold sweat, staring at the way the sunlight-- had the sun been shining today? The sun is always shining around Nageki-- halos his yellow-green hair so perfectly. 

It is Nageki as Hitori remembers him, angelic and radiant, not sickly and worried as he had been in the last few months he was alive. Nageki is here and Hitori can breath again. His heart works again. 

He reaches for Nageki’s face, his warm cheeks, that sweet, tired smile, but finds only cold, clammy skin. 

Iwamine’s hand is over Kazuaki’s own and Kazuaki’s hand rests against Iwamine’s cheek, gentle as ever.

Iwamine smiles, sharp and jagged and freezing, and makes one final slice just centimeters below the inner bend of Nanaki’s elbow. 

The kiss to Nanaki’s palm is timed perfectly with the cut.

Even after Kazuaki’s head lolls against the back of the bed, unconscious, Shuu continues his work. He doesn’t inflict anymore cuts, he’s done enough (for today at least), but he does properly clean and treat the wounds. 

That is, after he’s pressed his lips to every individual one, snaking his lips up Kazuaki’s chilly skin. 

He sorts everything out, cleans up what he needs to, pulls Nanaki’s shirt sleeve down and buttons it, and folds his coat on the back of his desk chair. Only once he’s satisfied with the state of things does he flick on a single light, and leave without a sound.

* * *

When Kazuaki wakes for the second time in the infirmary, it is nighttime. He is groggy with sleep and a headache, and can barely see around him. The only light in the room is from the small desk lamp across the room. Kazuaki makes to sit up, and all at once the stinging in his arm properly wakes him. He hisses at the feeling, pulling his right sleeve up to inspect his skin. 

He finds it wrapped with clean gauze, stinging, but obviously treated properly. He can only vaguely remember the doctor. All he really remembers is Nageki’s face. 

There is a small slip of white paper in his fist, he discovers, upon going to run his fingers over the gauze. It is in Iwamine’s handwriting and contains only eight tiny words:

_ “I am always willing to offer my assistance.” _

Kazuaki gets out of the bed, finds his coat, and doesn’t bother to turn off the light on his way out of the door.

* * *

Kazuaki’s wardrobe does not change. He does, however, dispose of all the knives and sharp objects in his apartment. 

He isn’t cooking much anyway. 

Whenever that familiar itch pulls at him now, he goes to see Doctor Iwamine. 

It’s done wonder for his mental state, getting to see Nageki almost every single week. 

Hiyoko approaches him one day after homeroom, just as he’s cleaning his desk off. The young girl is so bubbly and bright, and Kazuaki finds he’s taken a shine to her in the last few months. She always asks the right questions, and is always on top of her schoolwork. 

“Uhm, Professor Nanaki?” the girl asks, obviously hesitant. 

“What is it, Tosaka?” 

She fidgets slightly with the hem of her seifuku. “I just wanted to know if you were… alright.” 

Kazuaki gives her a confused look. “What gave you the impression I was anything other than alright?” 

“It’s just, uhm,” Tosaka wrings her hands. It must be about the lower than average grade she received on her last math quiz. “It’s… your arm.” 

Kazuaki freezes. Hiyoko doesn’t let it go unnoticed, backpedaling almost immediately. “I didn’t mean to make you feel uncomfortable, sir!” she says. “I just wanted to check to make sure you--”

“This?” Kazuaki says, and pulls back his sleeves. The same clean gauze wraps up his forearm. Hiyoko nods slowly, obviously not expecting an up-close look at it. “I just fell asleep using some scissors, is all. Silly me,” Kazuaki says in his faux-tired tone. “Sorry to have worried you, Miss Tosaka.”

“Oh!” Hiyoko colors. “O-of course! I’m sorry for being so nosy, sir.” 

“Not a problem, not a problem.” Kazuaki smiles. “Doctor Iwamine is rather good at what he does, and fixed me right up. No harm done.” 

“I’m relieved to hear it, Professor!” Hiyoko says, her usual demeanor seeping back into her voice. “I’m glad that you’re feeling better.”

Kazuaki gives a close-eyed smile. “Oh, yes. Much, much better.” 

**Author's Note:**

> thank u for reading!!
> 
> title is from miasma sky by baths


End file.
